


Forged Through Fire and Ice

by iluvaqt



Series: True Heart [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7705936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iluvaqt/pseuds/iluvaqt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were tried and tested. They would bend, bruise and weep but never break. They survived personal suffering, oppressive madness and a winter that threatened to overwhelm the living, to claim a love that neither ever believed they would find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forged Through Fire and Ice

The air was still, so quiet, soundless that he could hear only the quiet rasp of her breathing, his companion’s huffs of displeasure and the heavy thump of his own heart. 

His cursed the stubborn oathkeeping wench. Naturally this path he had chosen would bring them here. He would follow her anywhere and where would she go but beyond the Wall. What had he come to learn and admire of his loyal woman. Lady Brienne, sworn shield and keeper of oaths. Oaths sworn to guard and serve her Lady Stark, or Starks, now plural now that the vengeful murderous wolf girl had returned to her family. Not before leaving a string of bodies in her wake. Walder Frey and his sons had been killed shortly after he'd left Riverrun. 

His instincts were not wrong when he had felt he was being watched by unfriendly eyes that night of the celebratory feast. Considering the greeting he and his brother received the day they presented to King in the North, Jon Snow, to treat on behalf of the new Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and to offer troops in defense of the realm, her grey eyes cold and calculating, her hand on her thin blade at her waist, he had no doubt that one signal from her brother and they would have been executed not ten feet through the gates.

So naturally, when Jon Snow’s rescue party of one set out in search of their lost brother, Bran, the boy he had crippled, all it took was one desperate and imploring look from her Lady, and that sealed their fate. Despite Snow's initial protests, Brienne's firm insistence in volunteering to lend her sword, caused the redhead Wildling follow suit. The party of one had became a band of four. 

Their reunion had been as awkward and stilted as their last exchange some months ago. Her blue eyes widened in surprise at his arrival at Winterfell, joined by a ragtag bunch of sullen looking Unsullied and Lannister soldiers, all of whom fared poorly in the frosty and unforgiving North. 

“Ser Jaime,” she said her voice soft but brash. Her greeting stiffly formal, her posture betraying nothing of her feelings except for the way her fingers curled protectively around the grip of her sword, the sword he'd given her. Not to draw, she didn't consider him a threat. No, her grip was a rested hold, to keep Oathkeeper in its scabbard firmly at her side.

“Lady Brienne," he acknowledged her with a short bow before turning to his hostesses. "Lady Sansa and Lady Arya, it pleases me to know my pledge to your lady mother had been fulfilled by one much more virtuous than I.”

Arya snorted in dismissal. “Fancy swords and coin won't repay the sins against my family, Lannister,” she said cuttingly. “But if she says you are changed,” she said with a jut of her chin in Brienne’s direction, “I won't gut you - yet. We need fighting men, and you've brought them. Betray us and it will be my hand that delivers your end.”

Their stay in Winterfell was always going to be brief, but he had hoped to speak with the Wench before she had planned to disappear from his sight again. 

The Wildling, Tormund Giantsbane, whose size rivalled a small weirwood in breadth and height, his face and head covered with an unruly mop of flame hued hair and whom possessed the table manners of a hound, disconcerted him. His eyes followed Brienne like a man desperately eying an oasis. It rankled him. And he didn't know what to do about it. He wasn't used to competition. For that was what this, Tormund was. His competition. For now that he knew he was in love with the Lady Brienne, finally free from the sickness that had blinded him to his sister’s cruelty and bound him to her selfish desires for almost all his life, he didn't want to go another moment without telling the woman what she meant to him plainly. If only he had the courage to say the words.

He only had to look into her beautiful blue eyes, so clear, honest and soul rendering that he found himself saying the stupidest things every time her face turned to his, in place of his heart's truth.

“Built quite the collection of devoted admirers, dear lady.”

The Wench had near choked on her food. He'd had to thump her on the back, which left her red faced from embarrassment as well as angered by a perceived jape from him. She'd left her meal unfinished and fled the dining hall.

“Is it the rare sword you handle that makes you so swift, or that I am in poor form fighting wrong handed. Or perhaps you just enjoy putting me on my back?”

Why his brother's tongue always ran beyond his control, Tyrion could only shake his head and press another wine soaked rag to the fresh cut at his temple. That lion pummel could split an impressive gash.

“Your attempt at whooing makes me want to weep. They’re companions at arms, anyone can see that,” Tyrion said gently.

Jaime grunted and pushed his brother’s attentions away. Winterfell still had no Maester so it was up to those with healing experience to tend to any wounds and scrapes that needed tending. “It's not what he wants and I've heard what the Free Folk consider a marriage. The Wench is only safe if someone claims her first, not that she would have me, or that I even deserve the woman, if she did.”

Tyrion didn't say anything because even though he was certain that Brienne did hold a fondness for his brother, her oaths and stubbornness told him that she wasn't the marrying sort. And he refused to offer false hopes to his brother. He'd only newly learned freedom and he didn't want to lose him to dreams of a future that were not built entirely in reality.

::: ::: :::

They all knew that the enemy lay in wait beyond the Wall but Snow refused to leave his brother out there with none but the Reed girl for protection. 

Little did they know at the time that they would face the enemy on both fronts. While the White Walkers didn't approach the Wall, the Wights they had raised, had no such restriction and like the Wildings before them, had begun climbing and spilling over into the North, attacking and killing indiscriminately in their wake. To reach Castle Black had taken them weeks of fighting parties of Wights and they'd lost twenty accompanying men in the approach. 

Beyond the Wall, Jon barely reached Bran in time. The boy was deep in vision, his eyes whited out. The girl, his protector was half frozen but had used her own body to shield him both from attack and the cold.

They drove the oncoming Wights back, setting them to flame. The White Walker leading them continued to send more Wights but hardly pressed forward itself. Jaime found it curious and wanted to share his concern with Snow but all thoughts of speculation fled when Brienne was hurt.

She'd taken a bite to the wrist. It bled heavily until Tormund had bound it tight. Jon pulled Bran’s sled himself and Tormund carried the girl. Jaime put Brienne on his right side and picked up Oathkeeper from where it had fallen in blood stained snow. Jon had explained that Valyarian steel and dragon glass was the only way to fell a White Walker. With her sword arm injured Jaime passed her his lit torch and used her sword himself. They ran on all through the night fighting off seemingly endless waves of Wights until dawn broke. The daylight was weak but the eerie glow through the trees seemed to be enough to thin their pursuers until there was nothing but quiet.

They set Meera beside Bran, and Jon went in search of wood for a fire. They would use daylight to rest before making for the Wall again.

Tormund unbounded Brienne’s wound and they could all see that it was in a bad way. It was raw, the flesh torn ragged and he could see bone. She was pale and her eyes were unfocused. She'd lost a lot of blood and they had no wine to boil to clean the wound. 

Jaime used a cooking pot to heat snow and brought it to boil. He tore strips off the cleanest part of his tunic and dropped them in the pot. He unstrapped his belt and told her to bite down. As they cleaned, stitched and wrapped her wound with what little supplies they had, she mercifully stopped crying silent tears and passed out. She was strong, his wench, no screaming as she clamped down on the leather but there was no stopping the pool of tears that blurred the sapphire blue of her eyes.

His stump throbbed as he looked at her wound. He ached for her. She couldn't make a fist let alone hold a sword. He knew the helplessness and the agony, the loss of control and the fear. Her skin was pale and clammy, she shivered uncontrollably. Wordlessly they brought her as close to the fire as they could and pressed her between them to shield her from the cold. The burly wildling on her right, Jaime on her left. He wanted to be the one on her right, keeping a watch on her wound, wrapping warmth around her long chilled fingers where her glove would no longer fit over the bandages but he would protect her better from the left, where his fighting arm was at the ready.

He must have dozed because he woke suddenly, jerked awake. Jon Snow looked at him with dark and careful eyes before he nodded once and continued his watch. Jaime looked to his shoulder where Brienne had rested her head against his furs. Her breathing sounded like wind whistling down a long empty corridor, faint and wheezing. The sound was probably due to the multiple times she'd suffered a broken nose through her years from fighting men and boys before knocking them to the dust. His heart pinched behind his ribs and he brushed a crisp lock of frosted blonde hair from her face. Her nose was cold, her skin was much too pale and her lips were blue. He tugged off his glove with his teeth and put his hand to her cheek. She mumbled in her sleep but didn't brush away his touch. She snuggled more deeply into his shoulder, her chilled skin finding the warmth of his neck, he hissed at the cold but forced himself to relax, a smile pulling at his mouth at her position.

His Wench. “Oh Brienne, what am I to do with you? If I lose you in this frozen North, I’ll never forgive you. Do you hear? I made plans, dear one and they didn't include being fodder for the Others. So you don't get to quit on me. So quit being a bloody weak woman and fight.”

He felt cold lips press against his throat before he felt her warmed breath as she spoke, “Shut up, Jaime. Did you hear me whinging like a woman? Give me my sword back and I’ll show you how much fight I have left in me.”

Her words didn't carry half the heat or promise he was used to hearing from her but the glittering eyes she trained on him did give him hope. 

“Well if you're strong enough to move, I want to cover as much ground as we can before night falls again. I don't fancy another night out here.”

“What about you, girl?” Tormund asked his voice gruff as he directed the question to Meera. He looked between Jaime and Brienne once as they stood together, noting Jaime’s arm under Brienne’s shoulders and the way her unclothed fingers held the collar of his fur cloak and turned his gaze away. But Jaime understood the look he read in his face before he did. A note of acceptance, defeat. He understood that the warrior woman’s heart was claimed.

Jaime gave Brienne back her sword, her gloved left hand curling possessively around its grip, and he grinned. “It will always be yours, my lady. Like my heart.”

Brienne froze mid stride beside him. Her boot plunging into a deep patch of snow. He caught her around the waist as she pitched unsteady and off balance, wrenching her to his body to keep her from falling away. She stared at him, her eyes wide and her mouth slack. Her disbelief was obvious before a frown marred her forehead and her lips pinched tightly, and her jaw snapped shut.

“And you don't believe me,” he said softly. “Queen Daenarys gave me my life. But I chose to surrender for you. I chose honor because you showed me the way, Brienne. You believe that no one could love you because all your life you've been told you have nothing to offer a man but Tarth. Well I see you. How could I not when you stood in that bath bared, gloriously proud and full of righteous anger. You inflamed me as only one other ever had. I owe you more than I can ever repay and you know how my family felt about such things. I only hope you can accept a poor man, for that is all I am. A man who has very little honor, only one good arm and no wealth. I'm no real knight, I haven't been for long before I lost my sword hand and even though I have been pardoned, I will always carry the title Kingslayer.”

“Just Jaime,” she said, her eyes searching and her touch gentle on his bearded chin. Her eyes softened from the look of mistrust and hurt he had read earlier.

“Only Jaime,” he agreed, “if you’ll have me? I wish to serve by your side till the end of my days.”

He saw something like mischief alight in her eyes. “Just to serve?”

Jaime chuckled, his heart light, the truth had freed him from a cloak of doubt and under her gaze he was soaring, weightless. “My Lady Brienne, I will serve you in any way you wish. But my sincerest hope is that you will steal me for your own. For these wildling women have a curious fondness for crippled lions.”

A fierce look ignited in those breathtaking blue depths and her lips thinned as she bared her teeth. “I will not share,” she hissed. “I keep what is mine.”

The kiss he gave her was the gentlest brush of contact. Her lips wind chapped and split probably would not have tolerated more without pain. His breath warmed her to her toes and even the barest taste of him had her silently longing for more. Even as he drew away her eyes traced every scar, wrinkle and line of his face, lingering on his lips. Those wonderfully shaped thin but plush lips that had defied belief and touched her own.

His smile was so wide his cheeks ached but it was worth the twinge of pain as he adored the answering blush his impulsive action had caused. Her mouth slightly agape, lips pink and parted, a wonderful flush infusing sorely missed colour back into her skin, beginning at the thick long column of her throat to her strong jaw and defined cheekbones. “From now, for always, my Wench, dear heart and my stubborn keeper of oaths.”

Brienne grumbled ineligibility at his teasing endearments and relaxed against the arm that tightened at her waist. She has loved him for years, kept his secrets for longer still, never daring to hope he would return her affection. His love was astonishing and terrifying. He'd done monstrous things in the name of love in his past. And yet knowing those sins, she had already lost her heart to him, but could she trust him with her her body, her soul, her future? Just one look into his green eyes that held her transfixed, unable to escape and she was drowning. Those eyes that threatened to send her heart racing and her breath to cease in her chest and she had her answer. His words were a defense, he could be cruel and cutting but also brave and kind. His face could be a mask of courtesies, hiding lies and threats but she had been through too much with him to be fooled by the mask anymore. She knew his worth and the man he desired to be. A man of honor, a man of virtue and good morals. She knew his eyes. She could read them as easily as her own. She read his eyes, his face and she trusted him with everything. The world was a storm, he was her port and the only light she yearned to follow.


End file.
